Self -Respect

Self-respect is often mistaken for arrogance when in reality it is the opposite. When we can recognize all our good qualities as well as or faults with neutrality, we can start to appreciate ourselves as we would a dear friend and experience the comfortable inner glow of respect. To embrace the journey towards our full potential we need to become our own loving teacher and coach. Spurring ourselves on to become better human beings, we develop true regard for ourselves, and our life will become sacred. - Osho

For Better Mental Health (Shared By: Murli dhar Gupta)

When negative thoughts arise it is best to address them rather than pushing them down where they will surface again.

For the last several years, there has been a lot of focus on the power of positive thinking. Many people have come to misinterpret this wisdom to mean that it is not okay to have a bad mood or a negative thought or feeling. This can lend a kind of superficiality to their relationship with life and relationships with other people. It can also lead them to feel that if a negative thought or feeling comes up, in themselves or someone else, they must immediately block it out. When they do this, they are engaging in the act of repressing a part of themselves that needs to seen, heard, and processed.

When we repress parts of ourselves, they don’t go away so much as they get buried deep within us, and they often come out when we least expect it. On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to be fully human, honoring all the thoughts, feelings, and moods that pass through us on a given day, we create a more conscious relationship with ourselves. Instead of blocking out thoughts and feelings that we label as negative, we can simply observe them and then let them go. They only get stuck when we react to them negatively, pushing them down and out of sight where they get lodged in our unconscious minds. A healthier solution might be to develop a practice of following any negative thought we may have with a positive thought. This works well because positive thoughts are many times more powerful than negative thoughts.

Rather than setting our minds up in such a way that we become fearful of the contents of our own consciousness, blocking out anything that is less than 100 percent positive, we might resolve to develop a friendlier attitude toward ourselves, trusting in our inherent goodness. When we recognize our true inner worth, a few dark clouds passing through our minds will not intimidate us. We will see them for what they are—small, dark figures passing through an expansive sky of well-being and truth.

Moving On

As every flower fades and youth must give way to old age,
So all wisdom and each virtue may be valid only in its day.Nothing but our Highest Self stays with us forever.
At life’s calling the human soul must say farewell
And be ready for a new beginning.
Bravely and without sadness we need to
Enter into ever new learning, safe in the knowledge that
In the background of all life dwells the power of the Unseen,
To guide and protect us and help us to live,
Wherever our destiny may take us one day.
We are meant to move happily through space and time,
Without making our home in any one of them,
Because we know that our true home lies elsewhere.
The Spirit of the Divine never aims
To tie and restrict any of us; quite the opposite is true!
Step by step the Universe tries to lift us
Beyond the horizons of our present understanding.
If we are in danger of staying with one particular way of living
For too long, our spirit and soul stagnate and start to yearn for
Fresh learning through new adventures and further explorations.
The awareness that there is no death, that life is eternal,Without beginning or end, helps us to
Give in more readily to the demands of life
When the time for moving on has come.
The hour of departure from the physical plane of life is eased and
We can enjoy our rebirth onto a different level of life,
Because we know that all it means is learning of a different kind.
The realisation that life’s call to the human soulWill never end fills our heart and soul with good cheer.
It enables us to say good-bye willingly and happily,
Whenever the need arises, and go forward peacefully
To find rest and healing in the oneness with God.‘
-'Stufen’ by Hermann HesseTranslated & adapted by Aquarius

She

She flinches when he touches her,
and is afraid to get too close,
not because she's never trusted.
But at one point in time everyone she did let her down.
- me.

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

Life is a fight. You are in matter to conquer it—lest it conquer you.There is nothing in this universe stronger than the will of man when it is directed by a powerful unit of force. Whatever your strength, make the most of it in the battle of life.Remember that your opponents are not other men, but conditions. If you fight men, they will fight you back; but if you fight conditions, they, being unintelligent, will yield to you with just enough resistance to keep your muscles in good order.And do not forget the law of rhythm—that is at the back of everything. Count on rhythm; it never has failed yet, and it never will. Watch for the high tides of yourself and flow up with them; when the inevitable low tides come, either rest or meditate. You cannot escape rhythm. You transcend it by working with it. You can even turn and grow young, for time also has its tides; and there are many ripples in the long sea-swell of life.For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don’t enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are you’re not going to be very happy. If someone bases his [or her] happiness on major events like a great job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn’t going to be happy much of the time. If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness. .....: Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure.’ .....: If you are inside of something, say an atom, you only see electrons whirling chaotically around you. If you moved outside the atom you would see those electrons moving with a pattern around the atom. If you rise further above you see that atoms are actually the building blocks of larger structures called molecules. And so it goes, on up the scale, ad infinitum. The ever familiar ‘forest from the trees’ syndrome. It’s all a matter of perspective. True creativity is allowing yourself to gain the loftiest perspective you can in relation to the object of your quandary or inquiry. ... The discovery of this reality is hindered rather than helped by belief, whether one believes in God or believes in atheism. We must make here a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would ‘lief’ or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls, something borrowed which we mistake as our own. Ignorance is better than this; clutch at madness instead. Always run from what seems to benefit your self: sip the poison and spill the water of life. Revile those who flatter you; lend both interest and principal to the poor. Let security go and be at home amidst dangers. Leave your good name behind and accept disgrace. I have lived with cautious thinking; now I’ll make myself mad. ~Rumi, Mathnawi II .....: If you don’t have the right abstractions, you can make things artificially difficult. For example, if I was going to teach arithmetic and I only knew about Roman numerals, you might get the idea that multiplication is extremely difficult. Given the idea of Arabic numerals it becomes a lot easier. If we took Roman numerals, the Romans have no way to express zero. It was just a sort of concept that didn’t exist so a whole branch of mathematics was not only difficult, it was impossible. If we have the wrong abstractions, we can make things which are intrinsically rather simple very difficult. I think that’s what’s happened in parallel programming. We’re using the wrong abstractions and that’s making things artificially difficult.” - Joe Armstrong....... Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness—life’s painful aspect—softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose—you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.” - Pema Chödrön

you

The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek, therefore, not to find out Who You Are, seek to determine Who You Want to Be.”
― Neale Donald Walsch

QUOTE

“I'm not sure if there's one right place I'm supposed to be, he said, but I know a couple of wrong places I'd give a second try in a heartbeat. ”― Brian Andreas